Honestly film blogging.

Main Menu

The Accountant fails to live up to its potential.

The Accountant follows Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), a high-functioning autistic accountant. Although Wolff seems like a normal accountant, he actually works for many dangerous criminals around the world who have had their money embezzled. As the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division start to catch up to him, he decides to take a clean job with a clean client, however, when he finds the missing money in the company, dead bodies start appearing and he decides to finish the job by finding the people responsible.

The film is written by Bill Dubuque and directed by Gavin O’Connor and Affleck is joined by Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson and John Lithgow. Bringing such an amazing cast together is hard work, but unfortunately, O’Connor hasn’t taken full advantage of it. There are so many plotholes, but as the film is so simple it’s not so hard to catch up. The main problem The Accountant is simplifying the difficult things. Wolff is supposed to be so secretive, with so little information about him available that the head of the Treasury Ray King (Simmons) digs up the dirtiest secret of analyst Marybeth Medina (Addai-Robinson) and threatens to expose her if she doesn’t find out who Wolff is by the end of the month. All King provides Medina with is a couple of pictures of Wolff, where his face is never fully visible. Logically it would take a miracle for Medina to find any information about Wolff, but all it takes is a quarter of his face to be sent to the Department of Homeland Security to find him on CCTV. The dialogue is another problem. It’s so choppy and seems to be missing parts, with so many unnecessary dialogues.

The directing and cinematography are on point and if the dialogue had been amended, it definitely would’ve been more bearable. After all filmmaker, O’Connor directed the spectacular Warriors in 2011, which earned actor Nick Nolte his nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film had so much potential with the plot and the amazing cast if only the script had worked. It’s a slow film, especially in the beginning but this fits really well with the premise. One of the things to look forward is the action, although unfortunately it’s rare, but when it does happen it’s remarkable. It doesn’t drag on and O’Connor keeps it short and sweet.

The Accountant doesn’t feature any of the casts’ best performance, but Affleck does a satisfactory job in portraying a man with autism. The film is out on DVD for viewers.